In Which I Use My Words

I'm having trouble with pictures these days because my hard drive is filled up and I can't get them off my camera.  So again, lots of inspiration, no posts...

In lieu of photos, I'll attempt to follow in the footsteps of my bloggy predecessors in previous times who have gone before me (see, I'm off to a great start!), and um, actually write words.

Following: little bits from my day.  You're welcome.

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Evan was holding a ball up by his ear, ready to throw.  He counted, slowly, dramatically-- "Eiees... ebbies... dubbus... oh!"  And the ball went careening out a few feet in front of him, barely missing his baby brother's head.  Evan ran off gleefully to retrieve the ball and the barely-intelligible count begins again...

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Confession:  Evan still nurses.  Well, he did get sort of cheated, see, when Andrew showed up, so now Andrew shares.  I usually limit it, because look, I do actually have other things to do.  But Evan is becoming more insistent and is asking more frequently instead of less, as I had hoped. (Ahhh, my crafty plan... backfires.)  He's having a hard time taking turns.  So while Andrew had his lunch today, Evan sat next to him and whined at me.  When I ignored the whining, he became very polite in his own little language.  He looked me right in the eye, pointed to "the other side" and babblebabblebabbled very calmly all about why he knows that he should be able to have some milk at the same time as Andrew.  (Perhaps I have a math genius on my hands!)  I couldn't understand a word he said, but he made his thoughts on the matter very clear.

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Jonah lost a tooth today, less than two weeks from his 7th birthday.  This is his third, after days and weeks of snaggle-toothed angst.   Actually, he lost it twice.  Once from his mouth, and again on the living room floor.  I told him the tooth-fairy doesn't do search and rescue missions.

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Andrew wants to go from sitting, directly to climbing, it seems.  If there is anything nearby where he is sitting and playing that he can possibly use as a prop, he will attempt to climb up on it.  The bathroom step-stool, the rebounder, a box-- all of those are fair game.  He pulls the top half of his body up onto it and balances on his feet and arms and then starts to yell when he realizes that he has gotten himself into a precarious pickle.  Today I have rescued him from the rebounder, the brick pad around the woodstove, and the lower rungs of Evan's high chair.

This child is 6 months old this week.  What will he be like when he's 9, 12, 17 months?  He's already a total acrobat.

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Andrew is also not really crawling yet, but he's a master of Army Crawl.  He drags himself all over the floor (finding appropriate surfaces to attempt to scale) by his arms.  He might push with his toes a bit, but he mainly just body-surfs everywhere he wants to go.

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Evan randomly pluralizes what few words he says, even things that don't really have a plural, like greetings.  "Hi-ees"  he says with a grin instead of "Hi".  He calls Nathan "Daddees".  Actually his 's' is a strange conglomeration of 's' and 'th', but I can't type that sound.   The stove isn't "hot", it's "ahtssss".

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I was awakened at half-past-the-crack of... dawn... this morning by little feet kicking insistently at my mid-back and then my kidneys.  Then I thanked the Lord for the binky wedged under my neck, because it prevented me from having to get up or do anything other than fumble around to put the thing back in the baby's mouth.

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I've been bribing Jonah for some number of months now.  Okay, not bribing.... let's call it, "monetary incentive".  Whatever you call it, it works.  He's been responsible for folding and putting away his own laundry for at least the last year and a half.  But it's always been such a mess-- he doesn't put things away where they go and there were always clothes all over the floor, dirty and clean.  Every so often, I'd have to go up there with him and clean and sort everything and I'd nagnagnagnag and gripegripegripe.  Then I gave in to the ease of incentive and improved my general quality of life.  His drawers and floor are always neat.

Best 25 cents per week I've ever spent.

As a bonus, if I pay him in pennies or nickles, we have a math lesson, too.  AND it uses up that small change AND he thinks he has more money.  Triple bonus!  Although... it would seem that if he thinks he has more money, perhaps the math part isn't working so well...

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I guess that's all for today.

Let's do this again real soon, m'kay?